A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.
Links may expire, require subscription or go behind pay walls. Please send news and knowledge you think would be useful to al.cross@uky.edu. Follow us on Twitter @RuralJournalism

Thursday, January 18, 2018

FCC chairman proposes $500 million for rural broadband

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has proposed an order that would provide $500 million in additional funding to bring broadband internet to rural America. The funding would go to cooperatives and small telecommunications companies. The proposed order hasn't been released yet, so more details aren't yet available.

Besides trying to close the rural broadband gap, the order would "institute new regulations aimed at preventing abuse of the Connect America Fund and promote broadband access in tribal lands," Mallory Locklear reports for Engadget. The Connect America Fund, also known as the Universal Service High-Cost Program, is an FCC program to expand telephone and broadband services to rural areas. Under the program, "the FCC provides funding to local telephone companies to subsidize the cost of building new network infrastructure or performing network upgrades to provide voice and broadband service in areas where it is lacking," according to the FCC website.

The proposed order "comes on the heels of President Donald Trump signing an executive order
that speeds up federal permitting for broadband expansion in rural
areas and makes it easier for wireless operators to put cell towers on
federal lands," Jake Smith reports for ZDNet. "As part of a Connect America Fund promise, AT&T has been rolling out wireless internet to rural areas since April of last year and as of September, it had launched its services in 18 states," Locklear reports.

Subscribe to daily email feed

Subscribe to Rural Blog via RSS

About The Rural Blog

This blog generally follows traditional journalistic standards. It's not about opinions, though you may read one here occasionally. It's about facts that we think will be useful to rural journalists, non-rural journalists who do rural stories, and others interested in rural issues. We don't try to be provocative, so we don't generate as many comments as most blogs with the level of traffic we have, but we certainly invite comments -- and contributions, to al.cross@uky.edu. Feel free to republish blog items, with credit to us and the original source.